Bush Forges Victories in 3 States

George W. Bush romped to victories Tuesday in Virginia, North Dakota and Washington state, stalling John McCain’s surge as the two head toward a potentially decisive March 7 showdown.

Democrat Al Gore, meantime, easily won a nonbinding contest in Washington state, thwarting Bill Bradley’s hopes of resuscitating his flagging campaign. The Bradley camp denied speculation he would quit the race to avoid risking further embarrassment.

“It looks like a big win. But I’m not taking anything for granted,” Gore said Tuesday night as he watched the early Washington returns in his penthouse suite at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

He said he would make no overtures to Bradley to leave the contest. “That’s not where I’m at,” Gore said. “I’m concentrating on my communication with the American people.”

For his part, Bradley declined to speak with reporters. His spokesman, Eric Hauser, said the former New Jersey senator was determined to fight on.

“We lost,” Hauser said during a press conference late Tuesday night at the Biltmore Hotel. “We are a little disappointed. However, we think that in many ways it went quite well for us. . . . The energy, the enthusiasm we generated in Washington state in five days is going to carry us forward very assertively to March 7.”

On the Republican side, Bush’s sweep pushed the Texas governor past McCain in the delegate count and increased pressure on the senator from Arizona to achieve some sort of breakthrough in the big round of balloting Tuesday when California, New York and other large states weigh in.

But that will be a tougher challenge as fewer of those states hold the sort of open primaries that helped McCain score victories in New Hampshire and Michigan.

Soon after the polls closed Tuesday night in Virginia, Bush announced the first set of results at a rally in Cincinnati. “I’ve got some good news from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” he declared to more than 500 cheering supporters. “We are one step closer to victory, to having a united party, and one step closer to getting rid of Clinton-Gore in Washington, D.C.”

Breadth of Bush’s Support Questioned

Slapping at McCain, he went on: “The voters of Virginia rejected the politics of pitting one religion against another. This campaign is winning and we’re doing it the right way, uniting our party without compromising our principles, expanding our base without destroying our foundations.”

From California, McCain called Bush to offer his congratulations for winning Virginia. But speaking to reporters a short time later, he questioned the breadth of Bush’s support.

“It seems as if he has a Southern strategy . . . and we’ll look forward to [Tuesday] when we have a broad section, a cross-section of America voting all on the same day,” the senator from Arizona said as his campaign bus rolled down State Route 99 en route to Bakersfield.

Boosted by a heavy GOP turnout and strong support from the religious right, Bush defeated McCain, 53%-44%, in Virginia’s open primary, with former U.S. diplomat Alan Keyes taking 3% of the vote. Bush defeated McCain even more decisively in the North Dakota caucuses, 76%-19%, with Keyes winning 5%.

In early Washington state results, Bush and Gore had jumped out to commanding leads. Gore was ahead, 73%-27%, with one-fourth of the vote counted and Bush was ahead, 58%-38%, with Keyes at 2%.

At one time the Leap Day balloting was little more than an afterthought, a breather of sorts between the important round of early contests and the titanic competition that comes Tuesday.

But that changed last week when McCain beat Bush in Michigan and Arizona, bolstering his underdog bid and elevating the stakes as both candidates clawed for advantage heading into the 12-state Tuesday extravaganza.

“It’s something he needed and needed badly,” political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said of Bush’s victories. The win in Washington was especially significant, she said, because the moderate political terrain--and strong tradition of crossover balloting--seemed particularly well-suited for McCain.

“It’s good for Bush because it’s not a state where people anticipated he would do particularly well,” Jeffe said. For that same reason, she went on, the results were particularly damaging for Bradley. “With the amount of effort he put into the race and an electorate that appeared friendly in its makeup, he should have done much better,” Jeffe said.

The Democratic vote was nothing more than a symbolic “beauty contest,” with no bearing on how Washington will apportion its nominating delegates.

But the balloting Tuesday assumed unexpected importance when Bradley--desperate for a victory somewhere--settled on Washington as perhaps his last best chance to slow Gore’s drive to the nomination. He poured extensive time and resources into an all-out effort to beat the vice president, hoping victory--or at least a close finish--would give his campaign a badly needed dose of adrenaline ahead of Tuesday’s 15-state Democratic competition.

Instead, he is likely to face increased calls from within the party to quit the race so Gore can focus on the fall campaign.

McCain also targeted Washington, convinced its open primary and iconoclastic voters would warm to his anti-establishment candidacy. Strategists hoped a win there would offset Bush victories in Virginia and North Dakota and “maintain the status quo,” as one insider put it, heading into Tuesday.

Under Washington’s complicated balloting, there were no delegates at stake in the Democratic primary and only 12 of 37 up for grabs on the GOP side. Both parties will award delegates at caucuses Tuesday.

Like California, Washington allows voters to cast ballots for any candidate, regardless of political affiliation. About 40% of voters picked the special nonpartisan ballot. They favored McCain overwhelmingly over Bush, Bradley and Gore. But those votes did not count toward allocating either party’s delegates.

With his three victories, Bush finished the night with 170 delegates to 105 for McCain, according to Associated Press. A total of 1,034 is needed to claim the GOP nomination.

In Virginia, as elsewhere, Bush enjoyed the vigorous support of the state’s Republican establishment, which worked to suppress the sort of crossover voting that gave McCain his Michigan victory.

In fact, a heavy turnout of core Republicans swamped the independents and Democrats who crossed party lines to back the Arizonan. McCain never seemed to gain much traction in a state that, culturally and politically, still clings to much of its Southern heritage.

“It was always an uphill climb,” said Robert Holsworth, head of the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Virginia has not been a state that’s been extremely receptive to insurgents, or outsider candidates.”

McCain faced other disadvantages. There was hostility in rural areas over his anti-tobacco stance and animosity in the northern suburbs over his role in boosting air traffic at nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

But his attack Monday on leaders of the religious right, delivered near the Virginia Beach headquarters of the Christian Coalition, may have been particularly damaging.

Exit polls showed that religious conservatives comprised 20% of those casting ballots, and they supported Bush by an 8-to-1 margin. In contrast, McCain had a slight edge among voters who did not identify with the religious right.

McCain’s remarks “surely energized Christian conservatives by giving them an enemy in the race,” said Catholic University’s Mark Rozell, an expert on Virginia politics. “It seems McCain almost went out of his way to alienate the base of the Republican Party.”

Virginia is no stranger to ideological warfare. But led by Gov. James S. Gilmore III, Virginia’s top Republicans set aside their past differences and worked together on Bush’s behalf.

And unlike Michigan, there was no effort to embarrass Gilmore, who is enormously popular in the state; to the contrary, the head of the Virginia Democratic Party urged loyalists to stay home and participate in the party’s own caucuses in April.

But just to be sure, the Virginia GOP required voters Tuesday to sign loyalty oaths promising not to take part in the nominating contests of any other party. “I think it had a chilling effect on a significant number of voters,” said Rozell. “Many probably didn’t realize it was totally nonbinding.”

N. Dakota Caucuses Open to All Comers

Repeating his pattern elsewhere, Bush won seven in 10 Republican votes in Virginia. As in earlier states, McCain won six in 10 independents and nearly all Democrats, who made up 8% of the Virginia electorate.

More than half of voters called themselves conservative and seven in 10 went for Bush; among moderates and liberals, nearly two-thirds backed McCain.

In North Dakota, the caucuses were also open to all comers. But there, too, Bush enjoyed strong support from Republican Gov. Edward T. Schafer, as well as voters’ habit of going with the party favorite.

“Generally, the state has tended to support the establishment,” said Theodore Pedeliski, a political science professor at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, who called the outcome “no surprise.”

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, T. Christian Miller, Robert A. Rosenblatt and Matea Gold contributed to this story.

* McCAIN TO JOIN DEBATE

John McCain will participate in Los Angeles Times/CNN-sponsored debate. A20